UMBC Gender and Women's Studies Students Write Back

Save Your Tits

Earlier this week, my boyfriend sent me a link to an article about boobies!

Boobs!

The article in question didn’t show up on my internet browser, so I did some quick Googling to find out what it was supposed to be about. Apparently, a scientist in France has been conducting a study of 320 women between the ages of 18 and 35 since 1997. Jean-Denis Rouillon, a sports medicine specialist from the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in Besancon, France, has been measuring the movement (if any) of these womens nipples to see if not wearing a bra has any effect on how saggy or perky their breasts were. “Medically, physiologically, anatomically – breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity. On the contrary, they get saggier with a bra,” Rouillon said. That’s about all I could glean from the… eight different articles I had open in my browser tabs; that, and the fact that Rouillon’s studies indicate that bras are actually bad for breast tissue – but only in younger women. “It would be of no benefit to a 45-year-old mother to stop wearing a bra,” Rouillon is quoted as saying in this article.

After looking at what was what, I turned to some reaction articles, and almost all of them (especially this one) are amused at the notion that bras were unnecessary! I was shocked. Why would this be a bad idea? But then I remembered my roommates, and my former boss; all of these women have told me that they sleep in their bras because “it feels weird not to” or “not wearing a bra hurts.” Now, I don’t know about any of you ladies on here, but I think that is the oddest thing I’ve heard in ages. I, for one, look forward to coming home from class and taking off my bra.

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5 Responses

First thing I do when I get in the house is take off my bra! BUT I don’t have what some say is an “ample busom” so bra on or off makes no really difference. I just like to keep them where I can see them (they can be shifty characters). Some women who are “well endowed” have discomfort when not wearing a brasserie (or so I have been told). I guess I could understand wearing a bra so you don’t have your boobie bits sloshing around unnecessarily but to each his own, I guess.

While I agree that it’s problematic that women have been taught that wearing bras at all times is necessary–to the point that many women can’t imagine not wearing one– I feel uncomfortable putting the onus of this on the women, and belittling the fact that many women feel pain when they do not wear a bra. We should focus on why these women are in pain when they are not wearing a bra instead of making this a discussion of how strange it is for some women to feel the need to sleep while wearing one. I do not find it strange that some women would choose to sleep in a bra, because, as your friends and coworkers said, some women experience pain without them, and I don’t think that we should shame them for wearing something that helps reduce that.

You’re absolutely right, and I never meant to write my post in that way, although after rereading, I can see that I did. I only wanted to share the information from this study with the class because I found it so exciting!

I was hoping that the women who are in pain without a bra could read it and see that maybe there is hope to go without and feel comfortable, but no one should feel like they’re being judged or shamed for wearing a bra at all times (it seems like a really quick way to get dressed if you shower before bed like my roommate).

I love the feeling of taking my bra off at night. I have been trained to wear a bra because that is what a proper woman does. A proper woman is supposed to be stuffed into a satin torture device and it is socially acceptable. I sometimes wish I was able to go out in public without a bra without feeling awkward.

This blog was really interesting and shocking. I wear bras all the time, even to sleep. And in High School when I first heard that you don’t have to wear a bra to sleep, I thought it was so weird. I was taught to wear bras under my shirts, ever since I was 10, and it was never mentioned that I didn’t have to wear them to bed. Actually, I like wearing sports bras instead of regular bras, and I normally wear those to sleep when I don’t work out,(If I do, I grab another pair and wear that to sleep) they just make me feel more athletic I guess. Anyway, I guess the reason why I found it peculiar was because I never knew women took off their bras when sleeping, it seemed like such a foreign concept to me.